Ferdie Ato Adoboe is the fastest keepie-upper in the worldand is spreading the ball-control gospel to those footballing infidels in the USA. As Jonathan Wilson discovered, it's a true labour of love.

7:30am. In many ways Ferdie Ato Adoboe is o Fairly normal inhabitant of Amherst, Massachusetts. His days start with taking his two daughters to school, picking up the mail and reading the papers over a coffee in his local cafe. But Adoboe is far from typical. Many would call him freakish: he is certainly bizarrely gifted. Adoboe, you see, holds the world record for backwards running! 100 meters in 13.6 seconds. But it is the other world record he holds that forms the basis of his day job.

10:00am. Adoboe returns to his home office and starts to sift through the days paperwork. He runs Ferdie's Soccer Magic, a series of training camps, tournaments and exhibitions across the northeast of the USA. These, though, are training camps with a difference. Adoboe is dismissive of standard camps. Generic camps address everything which means you miss out on content and quality. Ferdie's Soccer Magic Focuses an just one aspect of the game, the aspect which he is peculiarly well-suited to teach: ball-juggling. In Tucson, Arizona, in January 1999, Adoboe managed 136 keepie-ups in 30 seconds, and 262 in a minute - both world records.

2:00pm. After lunch, Ferdie goes on the road to teach. He is almost like a Californian guru in preaching a 'philosophy' of the game. Speedjuggling, he believes, makes players 'Faster, quicker, more skillful, more sophisticated and dynamic'. Where normal keepie-ups improve technique, doing them at speed increases ability under pressure. The aim of the coaching is to make close control a habit, For habits are the root of skill acquisition. Adoboe wants all his players to develop an addiction to the balls. Adoboe first came into contact with speed-juggling in his native Ghana, where it is a popular game among children. Africa and South America, he says, are the two areas where such juggling is most widely practiced, and he cites Diego Maradona and Abedi Pele as two Footballing greats who have benefited From early exposure to the art. Adoboe led Africa to go to the University of Massachusetts in 1984, where his sporting prowess impressed. He still stands third in the all-time list of assist-makers for the soccer team and, in 1987, he was awarded the title of Umass Amherst
Athlete of the year for soccer and track and field. After a couple of seasons playing football in Massachusetts, Adoboe signed professional forms and moved to Sydney to play for St. George BSC in the Australian league. It wasn't long before his outrageous skills had attracted the attentions of European clubs and, in 1990, he had trials with Marseille and Toulon before being taken on by Martigues of the French second division. Coaching, though, has always been high on Adoboe's list of priorities and, after gaining experience with various high school sides and at camps in northeastern America, he decided to set up Ferdie's Soccer Magic. Speed-juggling was conceived as one of a range of skills to be taught there, but it was the one that has really captured the public imagination. In December 1996 the First Annual National Speed Juggling Championship took place in Ghana and, last year, the Guinness Book of World Records endorsed speed juggling as an official category to be included in their database. Adoboe's market is the USA, where he believes the lack of a football culture is preventing Americans from reaching their potential. "I want to know what will happen if we subject Americans to the habits Africans have at the age of 7", he says, sounding almost evangelical. He is, though, realistic enough to accept that his programmes only teach the skills. "There is still a need to bring together individuals' skills and characteristics in a tactical combination; what I do is to make those skills betters."

8:00pm. His day of teaching over, Adoboe returns home, makes the dinner and puts his kids to bed. His tastes are still very much Ghanaian. "I would usually have something like plantains and beans," he says, "or maybe curried goat if I really fancied a splurge." He then tries to catch up with Football news from around the world, something that isn't as easy in the USA as it might be. "I always have to watch Fox Sports Espanol (a Spanish language channel)," he complains. Failing that, he might watch a bit of nonsporting television. Bizarrely, he is a big fan of 70's British comedy sitcoms. "l really like The Good Life," he says. It seems that, as well as football, a delight in Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall's antics in suburbia has become universal. "l also enjoy John Cleese," Adoboe continues, listing A Fish Called Wanda as his favourite film.

10:00pm. There's always more administration to do and, after his brief period of relaxation, Adoboe sets about it, usually using this time to check his email and make sure the Soccer Magic website is up to date. It contains - as is the American way - a vast array of stats of his best pupils from the past three years, something which he hopes other kids can measure themselves against competition helps you to improve your game, he says.

12:00pm. It's bedtime for Adoboe. "I'm so tired after a day of teaching that I always sleep well," he says. "But I'm still dreaming about football. It never stops, and that's why I love it!"